WORLD WAR II REVISITED - Robert Peprah-Gyamfi

 It tells the story of two identical twins living in a small rural town in Gold Coast who set out, one bright Sunday, on a hunting expedition. In the process, the younger of the two, Kakra, is abducted and eventually forcefully conscripted into the Royal West African Frontier Force to fight on the side of the British Empire. The story follows the lot of Kakra as he experiences conflict on two fronts – in what was Italian East Africa and Burma.  The narrative also describes the role played by countries in West Africa in the war years prior to the independence of Ghana and other African countries.

 The role played, and the sacrifices made, by recruits from West Africa, including countries such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana, were unquestionably significant, as this book will reveal.

World War 2 Revisited is not a dry and clinical history book full of dates and facts. Instead, it makes the past alive as see through the eyes largely of Kakra and other participants.

The reader shares their endurance, their fortitude, as they face hunger, exhaustion, carry equipment on their heads and shoulders through rainforests and jungles, create air strips for planes with sheer muscle power, face bullets on the battlefield and, in quieter moments, discuss and argue about the meaning of it all.

The reader shares their friendships, their camaraderie, as well as the frustrations of these conquering heroes as they wait for long tedious months for a troopship to take them back home to West Africa, to be reunited with their loved ones.

This is not just a history book, but a human story, a story about human endurance and the worth of human beings, whatever their colour and creed.